Student,home, and school socio-demographic factors: links to school,home, and community arts participation

This study explored the role of student (e.g., age, language background, gender), home (e.g., parent/caregiver education), and school (e.g., school type, size) socio-demographic factors in students’ school (e.g., in-school arts tuition, arts engagement), home (e.g., parent/caregiver–child arts interaction), and community (e.g., arts attendance, arts tuition) arts participation. The sample comprised 1172 elementary and secondary school students from 15 schools. Findings revealed that student and home socio-demographic factors were the most salient in predicting arts participation across school, home, and community contexts. Age, gender, and prior achievement were the key student socio-demographic factors, while parent/caregiver education and occupation were also associated with students’ arts participation. Implications for practice and intervention pertinent to young people’s arts participation are discussed.     

Improving quality of the child care environment through a consultancy programme for centre directors

This study examined the effects of a newly developed on-site consultancy programme to improve global quality of the child care environment in non-parental child care centres for 0- to 4-year-old children as measured with the ITERS-R/ECERS-R. Using a randomised controlled trial with a pretest, posttest, and follow-up test, we compared 35 experimental group with 33 control group. The consultancy programme comprised three consultations in total. Analysis on the items that were specifically targeted during the consultancy showed a significant improvement on these targeted items between pretest and posttest and between posttest and follow-up. The effect of the consultancy programme on the total scores (including the non-targeted items) was not significant.     

Derbyshire secondary development project

This paper concerns a project involving six secondary schools in different parts of Derbyshire lea. The broad aim of the project is to investigate ways of helping schools deal more effectively with difficult behaviour. Central to its philosophy is that of building working teams within schools which have the time and power to influence decision making. The team concept is further enhanced by the creation of ‘support’ teams outside the schools which act as a management structure to the project. This structure has formed the vehicle for evolving a partnership with lea senior staff and for sharing ways of identifying and meeting school‐based needs and those of the authority.     

Beyond the ‘good teacher’: guiding pre-service teacher reflections on culturally diverse students

This article explores how reflective practice may be facilitated among pre-service teachers preparing to teach in culturally diverse classrooms. The significance of the mentor teacher’s ability to reveal her/himself as a reflective practitioner in order to promote student reflection is well documented. The article specifically addresses one teacher educator’s approach to offering mentor support with a focus on reflective practices related to cultural diversity. She explores how her ethnographic doctoral study on the classroom participation of adult South Sudanese students in different Australian learning environments has informed her own practice as a teacher, and ways in which her teaching philosophy and values were influenced by the sustained reflection needed to complete the study. By making explicit an aspect of her reflective practice, she aims to add to the growing body of literature on how to engage pre-service teachers meaningfully in reflection on their own classroom practice, especially in relation to teaching to diversity.     

School for Scandal: different educational experiences for females and males

Some would argue that sex discrimination in educational settings is on the wane. This paper, drawing especially from research undertaken in North American settings will contend however that the announcement of its demise is premature. Research shows that gender inequality in the classroom continues and is manifest in and maintained by a variety of overlearned, non‐conscious, verbal and non‐verbal messages initiated in interactions between teachers and students. This paper reviews four such ‘messages’. They include: (1) how teachers respond to verbal participation by female students; (2) how teachers’ discourse reveals subtle sex bias; (3) how teachers assist female and male students in unequal ways and; (4) how teacher non‐verbal messages feed sex‐based differences in present interests and future goals. The paper concludes with some suggestions for changing these messages and thereby reducing gender inequality in educational settings..